Everyone Peaks In High School

Nuclear tests performed during the 1940s and 1950s have finally yielded some positive science. Researchers used the radioactive carbon-14 uptake into fat cells to determine that the number of fat cells present in your body has been a relative constant since your teenage years. That's true regardless of body type or size. What can and does change is the volume of those cells.

The Bigger Picture: The carbon-14 is no cause for alarm, since it is produced naturally by cosmic ray interactions with air. What's interesting here is that fat cell turnover (a normal cycle of death and generation) remains constant in everyone. So the trick is to keep the size of those cells from expanding. This adds new meaning to the phrase 'expanding waistline.' Studies have shown that the best way to control yours is through healthy eating and regular exercise.